Conventional systems provide rollback of data due to corrupted data or for other systems. For example, some conventional systems provide mirroring of data in which case a “mirror” copy of data is maintained so that if a first set of data is corrupted, the second set of data may be used to recover the first set of data. Mirroring requires a large amount of storage resources. For example, if the first set of data is stored in 100 megabytes, then another 100 megabytes are needed to store the second set of data.
Some conventional systems include operating system recovery services that intercept communications at a file system level, keep track of writes of data, and recover data based on this. However, not all writes are considered to be communications at the file system level, so certain writes are not tracked.
Also, conventional systems that provide recovery do not address a number of problems. A first problem not addressed arises when a file system corruption that occurs during computer system operation prevents the booting of the computer system after reset. A second problem not addressed arises when corruption of a critical operating system file, such as a registry hive file (e.g., for a Microsoft® Windows® operating system), prevents the operating system from running a number of utilities or checking services and may impact the ability of automated system recovery schemes that are used as a means of recovery from functioning properly.
In some conventional systems, an operating system may not have built-in or auxiliary utilities that support the rollback of configuration changes. That is, some operating systems do not have native recovery systems. Also, an operating system with rollback capabilities may not be capable of handling the first or second problems discussed above. In some cases, making a binary copy of a hard disk (e.g., in the case of mirroring) may be impractical and is typically infrequently done.
Furthermore, some virtualization products cannot handle the concept of an operating system rollback.
Thus, there is a need in the art for improved data recovery techniques.